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Controlling crowds: Creating great software

Crowd control has been troublesome issue for governments, event organizers, bouncers, police, you name it since the birth of human race. For most of the people, crowd control sounds more negative than positive and is almost a synonym for force. But control by force has never worked out and all the attempts are more or less backfired.

So what is the best way to control crowds? Simple, keep them comfortable and happy. This applies to software as well, think your users as a crowd you need to control. You want to lead them to a direction you think is the best by providing best possible solution. This is not same as making every wish come true. It’s about providing consistent, easy to use software that suits their needs and solves their problem in an elegant way. Adding features after features is not often the way to go. It eventually comes to situation where you are trying to “force” more people to use your software without really thinking of your product as a whole. And yes… all the attempts to force people have always more or less backfired. So always think of your incentives before adding new features.

This all comes to the fact that you can’t please everyone. So stop trying. Cherish the crowd that is happy using your product and make it even better. This way, instead of paying of marketing you earn your visibility in media. Word of mouth is the most powerful way of selling things so use that as your meter and motivator when creating products.